Abstract [en]

E-business is growing rapidly all over the world and especially in China, which now has the largest C2C market in the world. Most studies of users’ experience of E-business either focus on the platform usage, platform adoption or include platform usage and vendors’ behavior as variables in general e-retailing models. However, we do not know much about what effect the interplay between E-business platforms and vendors operating on the platform has on consumers E-business behavior. In this paper, buyers' behavior in terms of choosing platforms and choosing stores is examined separately, while measurements for influencing factors such as size of vendor base and trust of platform owner is included to capture second order effects. Data was gathered through a questionnaire, published on a professional Chinese survey website for collecting data. Afterwards, SPSS was used for analyzing data. Similarities and differences between the outcomes for the two research questions were analyzed. The main patterns in the two models are similar, suggesting that the interaction between platform owners and vendors has impact on buyers as well. Price, which was one of the most important features of E-business, proved to be of minor importance for choosing both E-business platform and vendors. However, there are some differences between adoption of platforms and vendors, range of market is important for platform adoption, while it is not a indicator for consumers to choose a certain vendor. These findings suggest that there are second order effects involved in E-business platforms. Further, they indicate that once an E-business platform has acquired a large enough user base, the owner might consider increasing revenues from vendor fees, as long as they translate to small product price increases rather than a decreased vendor user base.